


Different Doesn't Mean Bad

by Ashley_vh



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Foster Care, Gen, Not Max//vid, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, dadvid, title may change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-01 07:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13290450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashley_vh/pseuds/Ashley_vh
Summary: David loved being at camp.  He loved the constant smell of pine, the soft hooting of owls, and only the occasional sound of a raid on the camp.  But there was something special about being at home too, even if it was surprisingly loud.  It almost made it difficult to sleep, but in the few weeks since the last camper went home, he got used to the noise again.  Almost.That night was particularly loud.  There must have been a crash not far from him earlier that night, and David had just managed to slip into the hazy state of not-quite-sleep around midnight.That was, until his phone rang.--OR--David fosters Max after camp ends.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1/6/17

David loved being at camp.  He loved the constant smell of pine, the soft hooting of owls, and only the occasional sound of a raid on the camp.  But there was something special about being at home too, even if it was surprisingly loud.  He lived just close enough to the highway to be able to hear the constant scream of tires on the pavement and the occasional blast of sirens. 

It almost made it difficult to sleep, but in the few weeks since the last camper went home, he got used to the noise again.  Almost.

That night was particularly loud.  There must have been a crash not far from him earlier that night, and David had just managed to slip into the hazy state of not-quite-sleep around midnight.

That was, until his phone rang.

He jolted upright.  There were only two people who would call at this time of night, telemarketers and—

“Hello?”  He said, his voice not quite as chipper as usual.

“Hello, David, this is Suzi from Child Protective Services.”  The woman was as calm and alert as ever, “Sorry for the late hour.”

He rubbed the remnants of sleep from his eyes and said, “It’s okay.”

“We have a child who needs a temporary home, are you available?”

“Of course.”

“Great,” she said, letting a police siren wail away before continuing. “We’ll be there in about a half hour.”

She hung up the phone before he could say anything more.  He just shook his head and stood, Suzi was always ‘too busy for pleasantries.’  Especially when she needed to call him in the middle of the night. 

He quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a tee shirt and walked to the kitchen, flipping on lights as he went.  He hoped he had something sweet to make as he rifled through his cupboards. The kid deserves something nice. 

They show up suddenly with a late night phone call and a trash bag of clothes after being taken away from their home.  He’d been an emergency foster parent for about four years, and he’s had 10 kids and teens stay with him for a few days and then move on to a more permanent place. 

He’s gone through this process enough to know that a half hour was probably going to be closer to 45 minutes, so he’d have time to make a small batch of cookies for them.  It’s a difficult, stressful time to need to be taken from their parents, it’s nice for them to have something sweet. 

It’s a simple mix, the kind where you just add water and drop onto a cookie sheet, but they still tasted good.  He hums mindlessly as he popped the pan into the oven, set the timer, and checked the cabinets again.  He’d need to go shopping tomorrow if a foster kid was staying with him. 

It hasn’t been long enough for Suzi to get to his house, but he was excited as he put water into the teapot.  He’s usually the first step to getting a child into the system and away from bad parents, and he loves making it as happy as can be for them.

As the water heats on the stove, he headed to the spare bedroom.  He’d cleaned the spider webs and dust out of the whole house after he got back from camp of course, but he still ran a feather duster over the desk, nightstand, and bookshelves just in case he missed a spot. 

Suzi hadn’t said it was a baby he was getting, so he probably didn’t need to set up the crib he kept in the basement.  The dark green bed set was folded in the small closet to keep it clean, and it takes a few minutes to make the bed in the corner of the room.  He hoped the child would be comfortable here and go to sleep quickly. 

He picked the small nightlight up off the nightstand and plugged it into the wall by the door and took a last look around.  The room was a bit bare, as it always was, but he’d never had a kid in it for more than a day or two.  So it would do until he decided it was time to be a permanent foster parent.

The tea pot whistled from the kitchen and he jumped a little at the noise.  After he poured the water into a mug and grabbed a tea bag, he took the kitchen timer and his cell phone onto his front porch.  It’s a warm summer night and it’d be nice to sit outside while he waited to take the cookies out of the oven.

* * *

She played top 40 songs on the radio and that was probably the most annoying thing about her. 

Max had been sitting in the back of the social worker’s car, listening to whatever shitty pop music was on the top 40 radio between long periods of the announcers talking about nothing.  It was past 1 am, the only people listening to the radio now probably didn’t care about the fucking top 40.

The people standing on the corners of the streets weren’t listening to the radio.  They were standing in packs waiting for work, or just passing time by watching cars drive past the slums where he lives—or used to live…

He should never have called the ambulance.

The social worker turned the car onto the highway, and bright white light shown through the dark braids twisted on top of her head.  He shoved his hands into his hoodie pocket and looked at the white trashbag on the floor beside him. 

She’d helped him shove an extra hoodie, a few shirts and pants, and his only clean underwear and socks in that bag after the cops left.  He’d grabbed Mr. Honeynuts when she wasn’t looking and stuffed him in the bag too.  Everything he was allowed to take with him, everything he owned really, was in that one small bag that wasn’t even full.

The social worker, he couldn’t remember her name, didn’t try to talk to him as they drove, and he liked it that way.  He didn’t care what she would say about where he was going, he didn’t care about what would happen to his mom in that ambulance or his dad in the cop car.  He didn’t give a fuck about any of it.

But he shouldn’t have called the damn ambulance.  Max got himself into this situation, and now this stupid social worker was taking him to a shitty foster home.

He wondered what the place would be like.  Maybe it’d be an old bitch with plastic covered furniture and no doors on the rooms.  Maybe it’d be a creep with locks on the outside of the doors and nanny cams where the kids sleep.  Maybe it’d be a tiny apartment packed with other foster kids waiting for nothing like those bums on the street.  Maybe they’d be violent—at least his parents didn’t hit him.  _Why the hell did he call that ambulance?_

Max was pulled from his thoughts when the social worker turned off the car in a dark suburb.  He looked around, there were no broken windows, it looked like all the houses had flowers planted in gardens and actual driveways with lawns full of grass.  He frowned at the long shadows on the house across the street’s garage door from the basketball hoop.  The only basketball hoop he’d been around back home was the one behind a tall fence in the park full of concrete and graffiti.

The social worker unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car without a word to meet the guy who left the circle of porch light to meet her on the grass.  It was too dark to see them from here, but he didn’t really care.

Max just wanted to be out of there.  He jerked the car door handle and scoffed at the social worker’s fucking child locks again.  He’s stuck there until she opened the door from the outside and that pissed him off.

He glanced at the pair coming closer to the car quickly before glaring at the trash bag beside him, she was probably telling the guy about his shitty parents and bad attitude.  Probably reassuring him that the burden on his little stepford life would be gone soon—

The door swung open, shedding light from the dome light onto the short grass outside.  Max didn’t even bother to look up.  That is, until he heard a familiar voice, “ _Max_?”

He jerked his head up, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, _David_?!”

The social worker looked between David and Max in surprise, “you know each other?”

Max folded his arms and scowled at the seat in front of him, not bothering to answer her. 

But David answered for him, “He was a camper at Camp Campbell this summer.” 

Max scowled harder, if it were even possible.  He slumped in his seat defiantly, “I’m not going in there.”

“Max.” The social worker said calmly, “We do try to place kids with people they know—”

“I said I’m not fucking going in there.”

David was silent, for once, but Max didn’t look up from his scowl.  The social worker sighed, “Come on, Max.  It’ll only be for a few days.”

“Don’t care.  Not doing it.”

“There is no other home to go to, Max.”  He heard a shift from beside him, “It’s either here or police custody.”

When Max didn’t even move, she sighed and started to walk away, but David finally spoke up, “Ya know, Max,” he said in a light tone, “I just baked some cookies.  You can have as many as you want before bed.”

That got his attention.  He glared up at David, ignoring the small smile the social worker was trying to hide, “What kind?”  Knowing David, it’d be fucking oatmeal raisin or—

“Chocolate chip.”

Max huffed, “Bribery.”  David only shrugged.  There was a long moment of silence while Max just glared, waiting for something he didn’t know what.  “Fine.”  He finally said, roughly grabbing the trash bag from the floor and dropping it on the grass beside him.

The social worker was already moving around the car, in a hurry to go home and sleep.  “Thank you David,” she said, “You have my number if you need anything, and you can call CPS for any emergency.”

“No problem Suzi,” David said, waving to her, “See you soon.” And she quickly drove off, leaving Max there, glaring at the grass. 

David smiled down at him and says, “Well, let’s head inside!  It’s pretty late.”  He started to reach for Max’s trash bag, but he snatched it away before David could take it.  The man didn’t seem surprised at all, he started babbling about something that Max didn’t even bother to listen to. 

Instead, he looked at the house.  It almost looked… normal.  He’d expected David to live in a tent in the woods or something…

David grabbed a mug off the steps leading up to his front door and quickly opened the door, showing a rather plain looking entryway.  The wood floors were clean, and the walls were painted a soft off white color.  As soon as Max stepped into the house, he was slammed with the smell of fresh baked cookies and warm, comfortable air.

Max’s shoulders tensed as he looked around.  Something about this place, David’s completely TV normal suburb house, felt wrong.  The smell of cookies didn’t belong in the house Max would be staying in…

David led the way past weird half walls to the kitchen and Max followed behind, looking at the pictures of smiling people he didn’t recognize standing in front of a tree, on a tiny boat, sitting in a room with wooden walls.  His house didn’t have pictures…

The kitchen was painted a very light blue, more like blue tinted white, and it was very neat.  The cabinets were shiny and the countertops were clean.

Max was looking around the room with furrowed brows and growing unease when David held a plate of cookies out to him.  Briefly, Max hesitated, but quickly enough he grabbed as many cookies as he could and shoved them in his hoodie pocket like David would take them away.  He grabbed the last cookie on the plate and bit it as David dropped the plate in the sink. 

“Well this is the kitchen,” he said, ignoring the snippy ‘No Shit’ from Max between bites of cookie.  He walked back out of the door and Max followed, “this is the living room, you can watch TV here if you want.”  There were stools against one of the short walls that probably made a table, even though he wasn’t sure why David needed a table like that when there was a dining room like four feet from the kitchen, but whatever.  In the corner, there was a TV bigger than the one he had a home with two couches facing it.  The rest of the room was fairly empty, but it didn’t feel bare.

David was already walking towards the hallway on the other side of the room, and Max carried his trash bag along behind him.  The hall lights were bright but covered with soft white glass that didn’t make the light harsh and there were more pictures of more people he didn’t recognize on the walls.

“Let me show you your room,” David said, he was speaking like he’s reading from a script, and it made Max wonder how many times he had taken I discarded kids.   

There was a window at the end of the hall and only three doors in the hallway, one on the left and two on the right; David pulled them to a stop in front of the first door on the right.  “The next door is the bathroom, and this is your room, Max,” he said, and he pushed the door open.

The room was… warm.  Max pulled his trash bag through the door and looked around.  The walls were painted a very soft off-white color a little darker than the rest of the house that went well with the dark wood furniture.  A window with white curtains with brown edges was in the middle of the far wall above a clean dark desk.  The bed was in the far corner covered in a forest green fluffy comforter, because of course it was forest green, and a fluffy white pillow.

There weren’t even any burn marks from dropped cigarettes on the hardwood.

“Max?” 

He looked up to see David smiling kindly down at him.  “what do you think?”

Max looked around, feigning indifference, “It’s fine.”  He dropped his trash bag of stuff beside the door and shoved his hands in his pockets beside the cookies.

David rubbed the back of his neck and looked awkward for a moment before he said, “Well, try and get some sleep, I’m sure it’s been a long day.  Do you need anything before bed?”

“No.”                                                     

“Alright then,” David said brightly, “My room is right across the hall, let me know if you need anything.”

Max didn’t say anything as David hesitated at the doorway, and he didn’t look up as the silence lingered.

“Sleep well, Max.”

And then he pulled the door shut behind him and Max looked around the room.  The light from the lamp on the nightstand was soft but bright enough to fill the room.  Max really had figured David lived in a shack in the woods… or just stayed at camp all winter… a little house in the suburbs with soft looking blankets and clean floors didn’t sit well with Max.

The bookcase across the room was full of books.  Baby books and coloring books and a small stuffed bunny sat piled on the bottom shelf.  On the next shelf up, there were thin books like Nancy Drew and the fucking babysitter’s club, and Max rolled his eyes.  On the third shelf, a little above his eyeline, thicker books stood in neat rows, series like _Harry Potter_ and whoever Percy Jackson was.  Above that, there were books that almost looked like text books.  All the books looked well used, white lines on their paperback spines and missing dustjackets. 

That social worker probably gave those books to David so the kids he keeps won’t destroy his fancy house.

He walked over to the nightstand and pulled the cookies out of his pocket, dusting out the crumbs from his hoodie and piling the cookies on the nightstand.  It was past 2 am.  It’s not like he hadn’t stayed up later, but for some reason, Max was suddenly exhausted.  He pulled Mr. Honeynuts out of the trash bag and climbed onto the bed.  The comforter was as soft and fluffy as it looked.

Kicking off his shoes and pushing the covers back, he flipped off the lamp beside the bed, laid back and almost immediately fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/3/18

Max was usually able to sleep whenever and wherever.   Buses, cars, desks.   He was able to sleep through loud music, yelling, one time even a gunshot, but that day, in his oddly soft bed, he was restless. 

It was too quiet.  Something must be wrong, maybe the police drove through, that always caused a bit of a lull in the slums’ noise.  Max finally opened his eyes.  The creamy color of the ceiling was wrong…  what happened to the stains?

He bolted upright.  Right.  David’s house, not his.

Max fell asleep quickly the night before, not even bothering to take off his hoodie.  But despite sleeping at 2 am, it was only 8:30 now.  Sometime during the night, he kicked the fluffy blanket off, but he was still clammy.  The air conditioning cooled the sweat on his skin and made him feel vaguely gross.

The room looked just the same as it did the night before, only now the sun beamed through the window and made the room look somehow more like a movie.  Nothing had moved from where he put it; his trash bag was still near the center of the room, the six or seven cookies were still piled on the nightstand, his shoes were dropped on the floor. 

Max strained his ears, listening for any sound.  He could barely hear the distant sound of cars, quieter than the cars were at home.  He pulled a cookie off the pile and sat on the bed thinking.   He’s in David’s house.   It’s clean, and it smells nice, and it’s cool in the summer, completely different than what he had before.

He hated it.

This house was so damn strange.  David was just so damn happy.  He’s even happy to take in shitty foster kids like him and smile and bake fucking cookies, and ask if he needed anything—

It’s like he really cared about Max.  Thinking that caused a weird twist of discomfort in his stomach.  It was like after parent’s night when David and Gwen took him to the pizza place.  But surely David only cared because he was paid then.  Not paid much, but paid to care about kids either way. 

After a while, David would stop caring.  He’d be glad for Max to find a different foster home.  Another strange twist in his stomach.  He took another bite of the cookie.

Max tiptoed to the door, straining to hear anything.  He didn’t want to run into David this early in the morning, he couldn’t take the enthusiasm.  When he heard distant noise from the kitchen he carefully opened the door.

He didn’t see any movement, so he crept out and turned to the bathroom David pointed out the night before.  He locked the door behind him.  The bathroom was the same color of off-white as the rest of the house and the toilet and bathtub were both a weird tan color he had never seen on a toilet before.  The towels were dark green and there was a small step-stool beside the sink.

The tiles were almost cold, and the only thing he could hear was the whir of the air conditioning.  It was too quiet.

He pulled off his hoodie and shoved the shower curtain back.  Max didn’t have an actual bathtub at home, there was only a tiny shower in the corner of a tiny bathroom.  Not a bathtub/shower that was set across the door that took up the whole width of the room.  There was a window of fogged glass high up on the wall, and the beams of sunlight reflected off the shower curtain.

Max quickly pulled the curtain out of the tub ( _why was it tucked in anyway?_ ) and turned on the showerhead.  The sudden noise was shockingly loud in the silence as he pulled a towel off the wall and tossed the rest of his clothes on the floor. 

The water was actually hot.  Usually, his parents forget to pay the gas bill for hot water.  And it’s not like he can pay the bills for them (He’s tried), so it usually meant quick, cold showers in the morning.  Now though, he stayed under the water for what felt like a long time, just enjoying the warmth and washing the sweat off him.

After a while, he shut the water off and pushed the curtain back.  The fog from the shower made the bathroom misty and warm, holding off the cool AC. 

Max wrapped the towel around his shoulders, and climbed out of the shower; the towel was so big it still brushed the floor, dragging across the puddles of water on the tile—

_Wait_.  Why was there water outside of the shower?   Water all over the floor glittered in the sunlight.  He turned back to the tub, _did it leak?  What the fuck?_   

Then he saw a droplet of water fall off the curtain onto the floor. 

Oh.  _That’s_ why the curtain was tucked in.  Because if it wasn’t tucked in, water got all over the fucking floor.

“Fucking beautiful,” he whispered to himself.  Why do people have those things?  The tiny shower in his tiny bathroom had a door.  It didn’t leak all over the floor.  Max ignored the flush of embarrassment as he quickly dried himself off to spread the towel over the floor. 

Even his hoodie wasn’t safe from the flood.  The sleeve and half the hood dripped when he picked it up.  He groaned.  At least the rest of his clothes were dry in the corner of the room.  Max wrung the water out of his hoodie and balled the towel up in the tub.

The floor was still damp, but it’d probably dry and no one would know he’d been outsmarted by a goddamned curtain.

Max tiptoed back to the door, listening for any sounds before he bolted back to the room he’d slept in.  He spread the hoodie out on the floor to dry out and pulled clean clothes out of the trash bag. 

He tried not to think about the sharp smell of trash bag that would, no doubt, cling to all his clothes as he put them on.  It was like a marker for the rest of the world to know if you’re a foster kid or not.  Do they smell like trash bags?  Then their parents musta been shitty, better stay away. 

There was a dresser.  He could put his clothes in it, and the smell would fade eventually.

But what was the point of taking his clothes out of the bag?  He’d be leaving soon anyway.  May as well not get comfy.

There was another twist in his stomach at the thought, but Max ignored it.  He was probably hungry, so he ate another cookie.

It was his intention to stay in the bedroom until the social worker got there to take him away.  Really it was.  But after a few minutes of munching on cookies for breakfast, Max smelled something _amazing_.  He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he couldn’t help but walk down the hall to the living room.

David was standing in the kitchen with his back to him.  He pulled a tray out of the oven and sat it on the stovetop, humming a little as he did.  When he turned around, he spotted Max before the kid could retreat back to the lost kid room.  “Good morning, Max!”  he said, pulling off the pink oven mitts off and setting them on the counter, “I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast!”

Max just blinked at him as he grabbed a butter knife out of the drawer.  “Cinnamon rolls?”  he said, the sugary smell was stronger now that the oven was open.

Pulling a plate out of one of the cabinets, David nodded happily, “Normally, I’d make a more balanced breakfast for the most important meal of the day,” he cut into the pan he’d sat on the stove, “but today is a special occasion.”

God, this was getting more and more like an old TV show.

After a moment of silence where David poured icing on the cinnamon roll, he turned and the smile on his face shrank a little, “What’s wrong?”  he asked, setting the plate on the counter table by the stool in the middle.

Max shook his head, “Nothing.”  He climbed up onto the stool in the corner, ignoring the unease that settled in his stomach.

David slid the plate in front of Max and sat the fork next to it with a smile. 

Usually his parents were still passed out when he left for school, so if he ate breakfast at all, it was dry cereal out of the box because all the bowls were dirty.  Now it was fresh baked with an actual metal fork on a glass plate.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Max?”  David said, “Do you not like cinnamon rolls?”  The plate he sat on the other end of the counter clinked loudly when he sat it down, “Oh, darn it, I should have asked.  I can make you something else—”

“It’s fine,” Max picked up his fork and quickly stabbed the cinnamon roll.  He took a bite as David rambled.

“No, really, I can make something else—” 

“Oh my god,” Max said staring at the plate.  “That’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“Language,” David said automatically as Max abandoned his fork to tear layers off the roll.  “Wait, have you never had a cinnamon roll before?”

Max didn’t look away from breakfast as he shook his head. 

David didn’t say anything more as he cut another cinnamon roll and added it to Max’s plate.  “Keep it coming, Camp Man,” Max said.  David smiled and put another roll on his plate before covering them both with icing. 

Max didn’t hesitate as he tore into the other rolls.  If living in David’s house was as good as the cinnamon roll, maybe it wouldn’t be as nightmarish as he’d thought—

But David’ll stop caring soon when the social worker comes.

“What do you normally eat for breakfast?”  David asked as he sat with his own roll.

Max just shrugged and answered with his mouth full, “nothing.”  Part of him expected David to rant about how a growing boy needed breakfast.

But David only nodded, like he’d expected the answer.  “Well,” he said, “While you’re here, I promise you’ll always have breakfast.”

He looked at the plate.  David sounded so… normal when he said it.  Not like he was promising something just to say it.  He said it like it was something obvious and simple. 

Max quickly finished the cinnamon rolls on his plate, feeling tenser than before and hopped down from the stool.  David had finished his one when Max finished his three, so he picked up the plates and put them in the sink.

When his parents used any real dishes, usually silverware, the dirty dishes would stay wherever they were sat until—

“Max?”  He blinked as David spoke, loudly as if he’d expected Max to be in the hall by now.  David turned, tilting his head when he saw Max still standing there.  “What?”

There must have been something about his expression, too much confusion for David not to ask about.  He shook his head and said, “Nothing.”

David seemed like he was going to say something as he turned off the faucet without turning all the way around.  After a moment, he seemed to think better of pressing it and said, “I have to go grocery shopping, Max.”  He dried his hands on a towel hanging from the wall, “Wanna come?”

Max scoffed, “Like that’s really a question.”  He folded his arms and said, “there’s no fucking way you’d let me in your house by myself.”

“I won’t make you go somewhere you don’t want to go,” David said, “the store can wait if you want to stay.”

_God every minute here was just getting weirder_.  “Fine, whatever.”

* * *

The next thing Max knew, he was standing on the grass as David unlocked the car door.  David was humming in the front seat, obeying all the traffic laws with his seatbelt on, with Max in the back seat. 

When his mom picked him up from camp, he sat in the passenger seat as she drove like a maniac.  The trips to and from camp were the only times he could remember being driven anywhere by his parents like this—

Not that David was like a parent.  He’s not.  He just acted like the ones he saw on TV.

The grocery store wasn’t that far from David’s house.  Max could probably walk there in less time it took his school bus to drive to school. 

They parked near the big beige building with more windows than you’d have in the slums.  “I only need a few things,” David said, “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

Max didn’t say anything.  He stood in the heat watching a teenager push a cart towards a car in the handicapped space beside an old woman. 

David led the way towards the doors and Max followed as the woman opened the trunk and the teenager loaded the bags away, and walked back into the store.

The store wasn’t just a store.  It had a bakery.  There were rows and rows of vegetables and bread in paper bags.  The social worker had called his neighborhood a food desert, probably because it didn’t have a place like this.

The closest he had was a 7/11.

Max walked, stopping when David stopped to compare the nutrition labels of different fruit snacks or cake mixes or pick the best bunch of apples as old people and soccer moms pushed carts of bread and milk.   He answered questions David asked about what food he liked, but stayed quiet as they walked across hardwood floors towards the back of the store.

Happy David at camp was weird, but this whole situation was just freaky.

“I just need to pick up a gift for the neighbor and then we can go home,” David said, leading them towards the corner under big white letters labeling it ‘bakery.’

Of fucking course David was friends with his neighbors.  Max didn’t even know his neighbor’s names.

The glass bubble protecting the desserts gleamed under the lights.  Little finger prints covered the glass above cookies bigger than his head.  He almost felt the need to touch the glass too, but like a sane human being, he didn’t.

There were weirdly shaped donuts covered in icing and red sugar, pre-made cakes, and cupcakes, and candies.  Max looked through the glass with wide eyes as a teenager with a hairnet walked out of the back.

He couldn’t see him that well, and his voice was a little muted as he said, “Hey, David!”  Because of course everyone in this damn place knows each other.  “School start already?”

Max looked up at David in confusion as he answered, “Not yet,” David pointed to the cookies shaped like apples, “Birthday gift.”

“Six cut-outs?”  the guy asked, pulling crinkly paper out of the box on the counter as David nodded.

David looked down at him as the teenager pulled open the door of the display dome.  “What?” he asked.

“School?”

He nodded, “I’m a counselor at the middle school.”

Max rolled his eyes, “Of course you are.”  He leaned against the plastic railing in front of the glass that was probably there so stupid people didn’t ram their carts through the glass.

“Anything else?”  The guy asked as he handed the white box to David.

“Do you want anything?”  David asked.  After Max didn’t look up, David said “Max?”

He blinked, looking up from his glaring at the shiny floor.  “What?”

“Do you want anything?”  David repeated, “A little snack would be okay.”

He looked back to the sheer amount of options, then back to David in confusion.  Why would David get him anything? 

“The big chocolate chip cookies are the greatest thing you’ll ever have, kid,” the guy behind the counter said, “Want one?”

Max just nodded silently, what could he say?  Adults aren’t supposed to care about getting kids cookies, was this like a parallel universe?

Though adults weren’t supposed to care about getting kids pizza either…

The guy behind the counter handed grabbed a cookie with a new piece of crinkly paper and put it in a white bag for him, and David thanked him, turned towards the register, and handed Max the white bag.  He didn’t even have to ask and David got him something anyway.

The few times he had to ask his parents for dinner were met with accusations before he just started taking money out of his mom’s purse for food before they spent it all—

It was too different. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally wasn’t speaking from experience about the shower curtain incident, totally didn’t soak my pajamas in a hotel in New York because I’d never seen a shower with a curtain. Totally.
> 
> Also, David solves all problems with food #Cannon 
> 
> Sorry this chapter kinda sucks, but lyss made it suck less <3 Next up: The Social Worker.  
> Let me know what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and thanks to Scotty for making me write this.  
> Let me know what you think! 
> 
> It’s been years since I dealt with CPS so forgive me if the details are a bit wrong


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